There was a lot to be said about just how nice it was to be alive in 2017. There was electricity and heat and music was so much more accessible than Aya was used to. She'd used the last few days just catching up on things and being a little awed at how good everything was, how easy. She could stroll around dressed in anything she wanted without the humans around her getting weird about it, money was easy to come by - for her, at least. Stealing clothes wasn't quite as easy, they came with weird things that didn't come off easily but thanks to the memories Aidan had shared with her she quickly figured out that each store had a little gadget that removed them. Something to do with magnets? Science was weird. She had everything she needed and she was still kind of fidgety and irritable because she couldn't leave. She wasn't just stuck in Point Pleasant, she was heavily connected to the witch boy with the clever tongue. There was also that nagging feeling that she was forgetting something and then there was Aidan's formidable sister and Aya recognized a threat when she saw one. She needed allies, whether she liked it or not, and Aidan? Aidan was the clear choice, considering he was her tether.
She made her way to his room shortly before midnight on Tuesday night via a door leading from her latest 'shopping spree' and looked around for her statue. Had he thrown it out already? She felt like it might hold some answers but maybe that was just wishful thinking. Aidan wasn't there but she could sense him in the house so it was only a matter of time before he returned and she used that time to explore, going through his things to try to get a better feel for her witch.
The days following the New Year had been a mess in ways Aidan couldn’t possibly even imagined and it didn’t bode well for the year to come. He hadn’t seen girl who’d identified herself as his ‘familiar’ had disappeared without a trace, apparently appearing for a short conversation with his sister and Knox, but evading him completely. No matter how hard he tried, she managed to slip away before he found her, even when he’d used magic to attempt to trace her. His sister had been called to form a coven and Knox had gone with her, leaving him behind like a child, only to find out later that there’d been two younger than him also in attendance. And Max… Max’s moods seemed to be all over the place, even when he wasn’t drinking. Aidan had taken to avoiding him whenever possible, though he’d sat and chatted with him over dinner that evening and he’d seemed in fine spirits for once. Unfortunately, Aidan’s lack of sleep had apparently caught up with him because he found himself exhausted and left his father and brother to head for his bedroom.
His plan was to crawl into bed, but when he opened the door and saw Aya there, digging through his stuff, he froze for a moment, glaring at her from the doorway. “You came back,” he finally said, shuffling into the room and closing the door behind him. He wondered to himself where it would lead now that she’d returned, but decided he didn’t care at the moment, so long as she didn’t boot him out of his room. “Looking for something?” he asked, watching her carefully as he made his way to the bed.
Boys never stayed mad at pretty girls for long so Aya wasn't particularly concerned with his glaring. Instead she smiled sweetly, setting down the pretty knife she'd been looking at and strolled over to the bed as well. "My statue," she said. "Or what's left of it. Did you throw it out?" She sat down at the foot of the bed, bouncing a little as she looked up at him. There was something definitely off in that house and he looked so tired, it made some alarm bells go off in her mind. She couldn't pinpoint why, just that something was wrong but there was still so much she didn't understand so she wasn't going to wallow in it. "You look exhausted," she said with some sympathy and patted the bed. "Get comfortable." She could worry about that statue later
The stubborn side of Aidan wanted to stay on his feet after she encouraged him to sit, but he was too tired to follow through. Instead, he sat down beside her with a heavy sigh and rubbed his hands slowly over his face, trying to focus. He really needed to have an encounter with her where he was a little more with it or Shayna Mae was going to rip him a new one. “My sister took it,” he said, looking over at her. He remembered Shayna Mae saying they needed to get Aya back into something, but he seriously doubted she’d ever fit in that bird again, even if they managed to put it back together. “What are you?” he asked while fighting the urge to lay down. “You’re not a familiar. And you’re not a witch. What do you want from me?”
"Why do humans need to have names for everything," Aya sighed as she flopped down and stretched out on his bed, reaching out to scritch scratch lightly at his side. "Some things just are. I just am. Part of the woods and now connected to you because you stole me." So really, he did this to himself and she had no obligation to make him feel better about it but - she did need an ally. "I don't want anything, I've got everything I need." Except freedom but she didn't trust these witches to break the rest of the curse and not stick her into some other statue if hers was too broken. Not yet at least. This tether would hold a little longer. "What's wrong with you?" she asked then. He was so tired, subdued, like something was weighing on him in a very unnatural way.
“Names have power,” Aidan said, closing his eyes as she scratched at his side. That was really nice, but he felt guilty enjoying it, aware of how much trouble her presence had caused. Shayna Mae wanted to be rid of her and would probably wring his neck for not immediately alerting her to Aya’s return. “I steal a lot of things. I didn’t know you were in the bird. It was just… just cool,” he said, slowly stretching out to lay on his side next to her. It sounded lame now, but as soon as he’d seen the bird he’d had to have it. Opening his eyes, he took a deep breath and struggled to find an explanation. “I dunno. I’m normally a night owl, but I’m just… maybe I'm getting sick or something.”
The nice thing about sleepy people was that they were so pliant and after watching him for a moment, Aya pulled at him to lie on his back before crawling on top of him and straddling his waist. She leaned over him, flipped her hair over her shoulder so it wouldn't get in the way then pulled at the skin over his cheekbones to get a better look at his eyes. "Something is wrong with you," she declared, frowning as she studied his face very closely. If something happened to him, did that mean she'd be free? Or would she perish with him? That wasn't a chance she was willing to take so she supposed she should try to help if she could. "Did you eat anything magic? Piss someone off?"
Something was wrong with him, but Aidan thought it had more to do with how casually he was accepting her in his space. She was a problem, but he was too tired to properly focus and it made him wonder if that was part of her plan, to only appear when he was impaired in some way so he couldn’t really deal with her. “No, I was here all day, just… working on stuff. Moonshine, but I haven’t had any. Dinner was normal,” he said with a little laugh. He liked the idea of someone mixing in something magic with their food, maybe some special sauce by Shayna Mae. “I was fine until dinner,” he said, frowning now. “What can you… can you tell? Like, magically?”
"Not magically," Aya replied and wrinkled her nose. "I'm not a witch." She just had a feel for her surroundings because she had spent so long being a part of her surroundings and still was, despite having a proper body now. "You're tired but you're rested, it's unbalanced." She'd seen it before in sad people, so maybe he was sad and she peered at hi face, poking at his cheeks and tugging on the corners of his lips to pull them up a bit. "Are you sad?" she murmured and wondered if taking her top off would make him feel less tired, if only temporarily. That kind of sadness... Depression, sometimes could be momentarily distracted away. It didn't quite feel like that though so she was at a loss.
“Sad?” Aidan asked as he batted her hands away from his mouth, confused about what she was getting at. He had nothing to be sad about. Mad, maybe; frustrated, for sure. But he’d been in a decent mood until dinner and now just wanted to sleep. “No, I’m not sad. Just tired,” he said, attempting to grab her wrists so she’d stop poking at him. “I know you’re not a witch, but you have magic, or something like it. Like what you did with my door, so I couldn’t leave the other night. Cool trick. Just don’t do it to me again.” He’d have been highly amused if it had been anyone else, but being stuck himself had pissed him off.
Aya wrinkled her nose at him and swatted his hand away. "It's not magic," she said, obviously offended by the insinuation. "It's just part of me, part of what I am. I'm tuned into my surroundings and the people in it and you are weirdly depressed right now. Like you left all your joy downstairs." Not that she could feel the joy anywhere in the house, it was just a manner of speech. She'd done enough prodding for now so she moved off him and flopped down by his side, resting her head on her hand and watching him intently.
“So?” Aidan asked as she pulled her hands away. With his own hands now free, he pressed his fingertips together, then slowly pulled them apart, electricity cracking between them. “That’s how I feel about my element. It’s a part of me. Without it I wouldn’t be me. Call it whatever you want, but you’ve got power.” Rolling onto his side, he looked back at her, a beat of silence between them as he felt his body settle. He was sluggish. Exhausted. And he hadn’t been an hour ago. “Okay,” he sighed. “Something’s wrong. I’m not depressed. So… what are the other options?”
Aya thought about it, even leaned in to smell his hair momentarily. "Someone cursed you," she said, a speculation more than fact. "But I can't feel anything like that. Do you always know when you're depressed?" Maybe her arrival had thrown him off balance somehow. She didn't exactly feel guilty about it but it wasn't optimal. "You don't feel bad to be around, or like you're dying." She slipped an arm over his stomach and settled in comfortably. If anything he was kind of nice to be around at the moment, all sleepy and warm. Like a bear in winter.
Despite how tired he was, Aidan laughed at that and rolled onto his back so she could cuddle against him. He wasn’t sure what was going on with them, but he’d never had a girl warm up to him so fast. This was nice, if a little bit weird. “I’m glad I’m not dying,” he said with a quirk to his lips. “I’ve always thought that depression had something to do with feeling sad. Or unable to be happy. That’s not how I feel. It’s like I’ve been zapped of all my energy.” It seemed to be getting better now though, which was just as weird. He didn’t feel a hundred percent or anything, but he felt better than he had when he’d walked in the room. Maybe laying down had helped.
Aya frowned a bit as she wondered what she knew about depression that he didn't. She knew it wasn't just what he thought it was, but how? "No, depression is also... being tired all the time," she murmured and scooted in closer to rest her head on his chest. He was warming up to her and that was a good thing, if she played her cards right he'd be on her side if his sister decided to act against her. "Your heart sounds healthy," she mumbled, listening to the steady beat of it. "Maybe you just need sleep."
Aidan wanted to argue that he wasn’t tired all the time; he was just tired now. Sure, he liked to sleep, but he’d been fine most of the day and he couldn’t imagine a bout of depression hitting him at the dinner table. He had practically zero knowledge when it came to that kind of stuff, but he didn’t think that was how depression worked. “Maybe,” he said, mind ticking over what he’d eaten at dinner. Maybe it was something he ate. “So… you’re here now,” he said, looking to occupy his mind on something more important than his weird need to nap. “Are you staying? Or are you going to disappear again?”
"I never disappear," Aya replied. "I always am wherever I am." She grinned, raising her head and resting it on her hand again. "I won't be far away, we're tethered together, you know. My thief." She idly tugged on his t-shirt. "I can help you steal a lot bigger things, I can go anywhere I want. Well, almost. I don't think I could come in here if I wasn't connected to you. There's a lot of magic."
“Right, but I mean… Where did you go when you weren’t here?” It was freezing outside, so she must have gone somewhere, unless she was some kind of creature that wasn’t bothered by the cold. Aidan had to keep reminding himself that just because she looked and felt human didn’t mean she was. He kind of liked being hers, even if he didn’t know what it meant. He’d never been anyone’s anything, not outside of his family. It was interesting to hear that the magic might’ve kept her out if not for their connection. Shayna Mae wouldn’t like it, but it was worth noting. “We don’t steal anything big,” he said with a little smirk. “We don’t need the cops coming ‘round. But that door thing you did? Can it take you other places?”
Aya scoffed at the thought of cops coming around; it seemed like such a far away and insignificant threat, how could she but laugh it off? "I go wherever I want as long as it's... here. I'm bound to this ground so I can't really go far - like to another continent." Even if he came with her, there were limits to where she could safely exist before losing a piece of herself. "When you feel better I can take you shopping in Bangor," she said with a grin because of course by shopping she meant with a hefty five-fingered discount.
‘Another continent’ was farther than Aidan had ever considered going. He’d only made it outside the state a handful of times and just didn’t see the point. He was tied to this place himself, not the house exactly, though he did enjoy it, but the town and the earth around it. Leaving never felt right, so he didn’t, but a day trip to Bangor could be fun. He rarely shopped with actual money, though considering their conversation he suspected Aya was a bigger thief than he was. “When I feel better,” he agreed with a little smile. He was already feeling a bit better and he stretched slowly. “So, I gotta ask, what were you doing before you came out of the bird? Just hanging out in there? Like a genie?”
Like a genie. Aya laughed and shook her head, reaching up to bop his nose. "Hanging out... You're such a dork," she murmured before actually thinking about the question and what the answer might actually be. It made her feel a bit empty, so many years, decades, centuries taken from her. "I don't remember," she said after a moment, staring a bit vacantly past Aidan's face as she strained to remember anything after the ritual that had imprisoned her. "I guess we were sleeping." That had probably been a good thing. She couldn't imagine what it would have felt like being stuck in such a tiny space, unable to move or talk. Unless it was like a tiny pocket dimension. Still, it couldn't be a fun one.
Aidan knew he was probably missing the mark, but he’d never come across a creature like Aya before and didn’t know what to expect, or even to compare her to. She wasn’t human, but he still held tight to the fact that she wasn’t a familiar either, even if she was somehow bound to him. “We?” He asked, brows drawing together. “Who else was with you? And where did they go?” Aya had been the only one to come out of the bird, that he was one hundred percent sure of. He might have been drunk, he hadn’t overlooked a whole other person, so maybe there were more birds. Maybe someone had trapped Aya and those like her into an entire set of birds. It was a horrible thought and Aidan hoped it was just his brain running away with an absurd idea.
"We," Aya repeated with a little frown. There it was again, that feeling that she was forgetting something important. Someone important. "I don't remember," she sighed and if she didn't remember, then it wasn't important. "But they're not here." She grinned again, poking his chest idly. "It's just you and me. Can you sing?" She knew his family familiar could sing, had listened to him transfixed one night when he was working in the kitchen. So far he was the only one in the house who'd done that. Aya supposed that was because there was so much music easily available now, people didn't need to make their own music as often.
If she’d been ‘sleeping’ inside that bird for some unknown period of time, Aidan could understand her not remembering everything, except how he’d gotten there and who she was with were kind of a big deal. It answered who she was and what she was doing there. Without that, she was still a stranger who’d just inserted herself into their lives. “You’ve gotta remember something,” he muttered, brows still drawn together. Her question caught him off guard and he paused his thoughts for the moment. “I guess. I can hold a tune, or I think I can. Why?” He didn’t sing often, but he’d never been accused of being bad at it, though he supposed that would require an audience.
Aya did remember something, some things, like her woods back in the day, the joy songs gave her, how she could keep people trapped for as long as she wanted in her little grove. "Music is fantastic," she told him since he didn't push her about remembering. "It makes me happy and nobody's sung for me in a long time." She smiled. "Your familiar can sing, but he wasn't singing for me so it doesn't really count." She idly did a little finger walk up and down Aidan's chest as she spoke, no longer thinking about the things she might have forgotten.
It took Aidan a moment to realize she wanted him to sing for her and then he just stared at her, a little frown tugging at his lips. It wasn’t that he couldn’t, but he didn’t really want to. He didn’t feel like singing and he couldn’t even think of a song when he tried. He knew music, he listened to it often, but nothing came to him. He watched her for a second, her fingers walking on his chest, and put his hands behind his head as he stretched a bit. “What else makes you happy?” He asked, still wanting to know more about her, but hoping there was a way to find out without singing. “Where are you from?”
"Shopping," Aya said with a growing grin, pushing herself up and resting her arms on his chest, gazing steadily into his eyes as she completely ignored his second question. "You look like you feel better," she pointed out. "I think I'm a good influence on you." That... was probably weird and she let out a little laugh and a soft 'huh' as she thought it over. "You wanna go shopping with me? You'll just have to hide your face in case there are cameras but we can go anywhere we want." Except the pretty soap store she'd wanted to visit and found herself unable to enter. Stupid witches.
“Cameras are easy to take out,” Aidan smirked and held his fingers a few inches apart, letting electricity dance between them. Technology was a marvelous thing, so long as it wasn’t fried. It might be destructive, but Aidan wasn’t the sort to wear a hockey mask or pantyhose on his head. The key was that he had to case the place first, otherwise he didn’t know where the cameras were. “I feel better,” he said. “Not completely, but not like I need an emergency nap. What do you wanna shop for? Later. When I’m feeling a hundred percent.” He had the feeling Aya would keep him on his toes. She might get them in, but he wasn’t sure she’d get him out.
Aya laughed, even as she shied away from that small spark a little. "Something shiny," she replied before adding, "Dork. If you do it right they won't even know we were there. We just take what we want and leave." Taking out cameras and destroying things would raise questions and the last thing they needed as another witch hunt - or witches hunting her. Of course, if they went far enough way from Point Pleasant he could destroy whatever he wanted, Aya didn't care. "You like breaking things?" she murmured.
“Depends,” Aidan said, sliding one hand back behind his head. “I like the puzzle of a good lock. I’d rather pick it than break it. And I like knowing I have the skill to pick a pocket without needing magic. But I’ve never had the ability to just ghost my way into a place, then disappear right out again. Being quiet and stealthy can only get you so far. And there’s something satisfying about frying an alarm system or hot wiring a car.” He couldn’t keep the cars, of course. They were only good for a joy ride and then he had to ditch them.
Cars. Aya had never been in one of those but she had a vague familiar feeling about them because of her bond with Aidan anyway. She could picture driving down the highway with him when the snow was gone, going too fast in a stolen car. It made her wonder if car doors would work like other entryways, if she could leave one car and step out of another somewhere else. It almost made he want to go try with one of those cars the O'Reilly family had standing around already, but she was comfortable right now so it could wait. "Do you like driving?" she asked. "Fast?" Her eyes widened a little at the exhilarating feeling that rushed through her at the idea of it.
Aidan looked over at her and grinned. “Doesn’t everyone?” His own car was nothing special, a junker that served as a mode of transportation, but that was about it. It as okay to drive, but it wasn’t all that fun for a joy ride. A stolen sports car though? That was a fuckin’ rush. Maybe he was a little bit of an adrenaline junkie because the only thing that kept him from doing it more often was that he really couldn’t get caught. Which brought him around to Aya, this thoughts echoing hers. “You can’t, like, teleport us out of the car and into my bedroom, can you?” It sounded absurd, but he didn’t really understand what she could do.
"I don't know," Aya said honestly. "It's a different door." Truth be told she wasn't sure if she could do it at all. She could work with wood, whether it was walking between trees or door frames but so many things now were metal, aluminum, iron, something else she wasn't sure how to interact with. Aya wasn't even sure how her little gift really worked, it was just part of her. She wanted to experiment now, maybe going through a window would let her go through a car door but experimenting with someone else present was absolutely a no-go so it could wait. "I've never been in a car," she murmured and now she wasn't sure if she really wanted to try it or if she'd just feel trapped.
Her answer gave him the sense that it was more about the door than the teleporting, so maybe teleport wasn’t the right word. Maybe it was a portal from one doorway to the next. Or maybe it was something else entirely. He wanted to see her do it again and see if he could feel the magic, now that he wasn’t drunk. “You want to go try it?” he asked with a little smile. “My car’s not much, but we don’t even have to be moving if you want to see how it works.” He imagined that experimenting with something like that wasn’t something she’d want to do while the car was moving.
"Not now," Aya replied, reluctant to try and fail where he could see her. "I haven't made up my mind about cars yet." That was as good a reason as any, she was allowed to be fickle and choosy and for all he knew she was just flighty that way, not insecure about a damn thing. "You're going to play me some music now," she said to distract him from his idea, tapping her finger against his nose in a playful manner. "Turn on your music thing." She'd be damned if she understood half of how all this crap worked but she still knew and it amused her that he was the same. He couldn't rebuild this technology - except perhaps with magic - and maybe most humans were the same; walking around and enjoying things they knew nothing about. It certainly made her feel less out of the loop.
Aidan couldn’t imagine living in a world where cars were optional, but then he couldn’t step through a door and appear somewhere else. Cars were how people got places, even in a small ass town like Point Pleasant. Without one, you were stuck. “My music thing?” He asked, lips quirking up towards a smile. He figured she wanted him to stream something, but the way she’d asked amused him, making it clear that she didn’t really understand how it all worked. Aidan got it concept-wise, though most of it was beyond him as well. “What kind of music do you want to listen to?” he asked, reaching for his phone. Most of what he had was junk, but he had a decent set of bluetooth speakers that he’d lifted during last year’s Black Friday rush.
"Something with a flute in it," Aya replied, watching his phone with open curiosity. "You have an app for that... Ooh, or-" she squinted, wrinkling her nose as she fumbled for the name of whatever it was she was thinking of. "Just people singing. Acapella? Do you have that on your phone app?" Music had always made her happy so maybe she should get herself a phone too, with an app that had all the music she could ever want. It was such a weird little invention, so small and yet so gigantic, so much bigger than her world had ever been.
“A flute?” Aidan asked before she changed her mind to Acapella. And thank the gods because he had no idea what music had a flute in it. Certainly nothing he listened to. “I think we can find you something like that,” he said, thumbing through the genres on Spotify. Again, not really his style, but at least he knew what she was looking for this time. He started up a song, then looked at her expectantly, not even sure if this was what she’d wanted. “Something like this?” He asked. “When… When do you think you lived last? Like...what year was it, before you went into the bird?” His mind kept going back to the flutes and what period of time that must have been.
Aya made a little sound, wrinkling her nose as she thought about it. "Sixteen... forty-" she drew the word out as she tried to remember. "Nine? You know those numbers are meaningless, right? The world is a lot older than that." She knew he knew, of course, but it was worth mentioning. The whole calendar thing was based on Christianity which was - like most myths - a weird little mix of fact and fiction. It seemed funny to her but at the same time a more accurate date would probably be a mouthful and a half. "Humans were way more boring back then - and bored! You have it so good."
Aidan stared at her, mouth agape as he did the math. She’d been in that bird close to 400 years. Sleeping, or something like it, and waiting for the right person to set her free again. Aidan could hardly wrap his head around it. “A lot’s changed since then,” he agreed, running his fingers through his hair, then settling with one hand behind his head. “I know the world’s older, but our calendar gives us a point of reference.” If she’d compared it to the point of creation, he wouldn’t have any idea when she was talking about. He stared at her for a minute, his mind ticking back to the point that she’d dodged earlier. “Aya… How did you get in the bird? Did someone put you there?” Her and...someone else.
She knew the world was different but only through the references she'd gotten from Aidan when she connected with him. There were probably lots of things he didn't know that she could stand to learn but she wasn't in any rush to do so. The question was an uncomfortable one because she wasn't so naive to think he'd not suspect her of foul play if she told him witches had done it. He was a little biased - being a witch himself. "Some very bad people," she said with a solemn nod. "I didn't do anything wrong but they thought I had, they thought I was someone - something - else. It was unfair but humans can be like that. Especially angry mobs. They used to kill people back then for the smallest things, you know?”
“I know,” Aidan said. “They killed us just for being witches.” He knew there was probably more to it than that, but people were easily manipulated once they were scared and mob mentality could be a horrible thing. It did make him wonder though… Usually there was a trigger, even if it was misunderstood. “Do you think they’re still around?” he asked. “The bad people.” Was someone going to come looking for her, now that she was free? Aya didn’t seem like that big a problem herself, but if she was being hunted, then her attachment to him could put them all in danger. Shayna Mae’s lecture came back to him, along with the desire to prove her wrong, to show that he could be responsible. He just didn’t know what he needed to ask and it wasn’t like Aya was providing the most helpful of answers. “Are we in danger?”
Aya's eyes widened a bit as she thought about it, for a moment wondering if witches could live for hundreds of years but then she remembered that no, they could not. They were - despite all their powers - human. She grinned and patted Aidan's cheek. "They're all long dead," she murmured happily. And probably hadn't thought their curse through, they just wanted to get rid of her. Memories fluttered up to the surface, like remnants of a fading dream where she was looking at herself, someone just like her, face tight with anger and hatred. Aya shook the memory off, she didn't like feeling bad so why dwell on something that so obviously distressed her? "You're as safe as any witch living in Point Pleasant can be," she reassured Aidan and sat up, listening to the music instead. Human voices could be so pretty and they made her feel so good so she closed her eyes and enjoyed the harmonizing instead of thinking.
Aidan snorted at that, not sure any of them were ever really safe, but he’d always felt like the witches at least had a leg up on the rest of them. He hoped she was right, but just in case she wasn’t, he’d fill his sister in on the situation. Knowing her, she’d probably already deduced as much. “There are probably better places you could be stuck, but... we’ll keep you safe,” he said with a lazy little smile. He had the feeling that Aya could probably fend for herself fairly well, but if she was going to be stuck with a family of witches, Aidan thought his was the best one to be with. They might be a little different than the rest, but he’d always seen that as a good thing.
There were most definitely worse witches to be stuck with and Aya didn't need to meet the other witches in town to know that. They hadn't tried to banish her - at least not yet - they had a nice house and Aidan wasn't some moral preaching law abiding boring sack of shit. She opened her eyes and gave him a little grin when he spoke. She didn't think anyone had ever promised to keep her safe before and she liked the way it sounded even if she didn't really feel like she needed it. It was sweet and if it meant he'd keep his own family from bothering her too then all the better. "My gallant knight," she murmured. "Rogue with a heart of gold."
Safe from danger and safe from his sister were two different things, but Aidan didn’t think they were one in the same. He’d never been called gallant, wasn’t even sure what it meant, but from the context he got the feeling she thought he was a lot more noble than he was. Aidan laughed softly and rolled his eyes, doubting he could live up to such a title. “I dunno about that. Let’s not put it to the test.” He could be a bit of an adrenaline junkie, but wasn’t sure that anyone would call him brave. Knights were definitely supposed to be brave. “So, you gonna hang around more often? Or are you gonna disappear again?”
He didn't have to verbally protest her description of him, his laugh was cute enough and it made Aya laugh too, quiet and under her breath but her lips spread in a wide smile for it. He certainly was no knight, she knew that, he was a thief and a witch but she preferred that - at least the thief part. She didn't answer his question right away, listening to the song instead as she thought about it but then she flopped down next to him again, stretching like a cat. "Are you worried you'll never see me again?"
“Maybe I just want to know if I’m gonna have to share a bed?” Aidan teased, giving her a little nudge. He had the feeling that if she was truly bound to him, she couldn’t exactly leave him for good, but it would be nice to know when she was coming and going. If he’d been the sort to bring girls home, it would’ve been awkward for her to walk in and find someone else there with him. He couldn’t decide if he was lucky or not that that wouldn’t be an issue. “Just...trying to get a handle on this arrangement. And Knox’d probably like to know if you’re gonna be here for dinner and shit.”
That last part cracked her up and had her laughing earnestly once she imagined domestic little dinners with his whole family. She couldn't imagine Knox and Shayna Mae wanting her to stay for dinner but it could be delightful really, drinking in their discomfort and awkwardness that was bound to arise from such an occasion. "He takes care of you, huh?" she said after a good few seconds when her giggles had died down some. "Some more than others." She wiggled her eyebrows, then laughed again, flopping onto her back and resting her hands on her stomach as she tried to catch her breath again.
“Well, he’s the best cook in the house,” Aidan shrugged, his brows drawing together as her other comment settled in. “Wait, what?” he asked, feeling like he’d missed something. Knox was taking care of some of them more than the others? When the implications finally hit him, Aidan scowled and sat up. “Are you serious?” he asked, not liking where his brain had gone in the least, but refusing to say it aloud. If he was completely off base, he’d feel horrible.
"I'm rarely serious," Aya replied playfully. "You seem grouchy, does it really bother you?" It was hard to figure out what upset people sometimes, human emotions were complicated and weird and the way he reacted, well, it didn't tell her much about what was going through his mind. "I thought it was normal for a witch to have some fun with her familiar."
Well, that pretty much answered his question. Aidan was quiet, a scowl on his face as his mind jumped from one emotion to the next. Knox was like a brother to him. And sometimes a father. His role might’ve been a bit unclear, but he was family as much as the rest of them were, and hearing that he was hooking up with Shayna Mae felt akin to his siblings sleeping together. It might as well have been Max instead of Knox, though this was weirder. “He’s not her familiar,” he said, though that wasn’t entirely true. He was their familiar. And he could do as he pleased. That didn’t mean Aidan liked it.
"Are you jealous?" Aya said in an almost sing-song voice. "Did you wanna get some of that for yourself?" She knew it was more likely that he was unhappy hearing about his sister getting it on, men could be weird like that, it was just more fun to tease him about it because he was being a baby. "And I thought he was her familiar, what is he then?" He was somebody's familiar, the whole family's maybe but she wasn't really sure what all that entailed beyond the obvious.
“No,” Aidan snapped, his face twisting in mild disgust. “He’s like my brother. And I’m not into guys.” He didn’t have a problem with guys who were, but it wasn’t his thing and the thought of him and Knox was just gross in his mind. But so was Shayna Mae and Knox. “He’s the whole family’s familiar. He’s been here our whole lives. It’d be like...like if your sister started getting it on with your uncle.” He didn’t know if she had a sister, or an uncle for that matter, but it was the closest he could come to explaining why it bothered him.
Aya shrugged. "I don't get it," she said lightly and it was hard to imagine not having fun with someone just because of who they were. Uncles, sisters, who cared? Trees and plants and animals all tangled together and even humans became part of that shared soil in the end. She stretched comfortably before toying with her necklace, looking over at the speaker. She wasn't really bothered by the fact that she didn't understand his disgust, people were so odd and complicated, why would her human be any different? "I want to listen to that song again," she said instead. "Can we?"
It was weird to Aidan that Aya didn’t get what he was saying, but he chalked it up to her not being human. Even though she looked human, he knew animals didn’t give a shit about the relationship between two creatures, so he supposed there were some things she just wasn’t going to understand. “Sure,” he smiled, laying back on the bed to start up the song and listen with her. He was feeling a little better now, but he could laze around a while longer. It wasn’t like he had anywhere else he needed to be.